The legend of Elizabeth Bathory
Countess Elizabeth Bathory was left a widower when her husband died in 1604. While ruling over quite a bit of land, she developed a nasty habit of luring and kidnapping young women from the near-by villages. There are many versions of what she did to the girls but one of them is about a room she had built into the castle.
According to legend the girls, who had to be young and virgins, were tortured and killed in the room so that their blood would trickle down onto the floor. This wasn’t just any floor, but a grid floor. And below there was another room with a bath where the blood would trickle into.
She then bathed in the blood believing that it would maintain her youth and good looks. For ten years she was able to keep this up until she was captured and sued.
According to official numbers she killed 80 young women. But it was also presented that she would have killed 650 women and kept score in a book about them.
She is to this date the most “productive” female serial killer which has also resulted in people comparing her to the famous Vlad the Impaler, also known as Count Dracula.
What happened to her?
Instead of the obvious death sentence her defence managed to persuade the Hungarian king to lower the sentence to lifetime imprisonment. She was kept in the bottom of a tower in the castle of Cachticky. There she died after four years under suspicious circumstances.
This badass “noble” lady has inspired countless artists to repeat her story through movies, plays, video games, books and music.
Whether Elizabet Bathory actually bathed in blood is not officially proven to be true, but it does give her story a nice freaky angle. Nonetheless, her doing what she did has often been explained through vanity. But I think she was just plain simply insane.
The day we visited the castle was quite cloudy, and since it was early Spring, the castle’s surroundings were a bit spooky. We had also been drinking the story from Wikipedia before the trip focusing on the most horrific versions.
But no ghosts showed up, even though just before we left the temperature plummeted big time. We blamed it on the Czechs who have a bad habit of attracting disasters in the Slovak mountains. True story.
That was another Slovak castle conquered and stories explored. This country has soooo much potential to become a major tourist destination with all the castles, wineries and beauuutiful mountains.
Is the legend of Elizabeth Bathory true?
For a long time it was accepted that the legend echoes with truth. Since it’s over 400 years since Elizabeth Bathory or her castle existed, it’s hard to come by any proper evidence for or against her.
But recently the accounts of her legend as the first female serial killer have been questioned. The rumours of her kidnapping and killing young women spread wide and far between 1604 – 1606 (right after she was left a widower).
The rumours spread all the way to the Holy Roman Empire where Matthias II then ordered Gy?rgy Thurzó to go and investigate.
Thurzó collected over 300 witness statements and then reported of dead and tortured women being found at Bathory’s castle. Upon these statements Bathory was brought to court.
At said court the witnesses explained that none of them had actually witnessed anything they had said themselves. They had simply been repeating what they had heard from others. Bathory’s servants, on the other hand, confessed under torture. And so, Bathory was convicted.
The question marks
Even during that time there were many who defended Elizabeth Bathory, though, saying that she was a victim of a conspiracy. As women we know that the world is still not a fair place for us. But imagine how unfair it was towards a powerful woman back then!
Because Elizabeth was a very powerful woman. She owned a lot of Hungarian land and was very wealthy. In addition, she was not Catholic, which didn’t suit The Holy Roman Emperor Matthias II at all. What makes his interest in Bathory’s case even more questionable is the fact that he owed her a lot of money.
Obviously that debt was written off after Elizabeth was convicted. Getting Bathory out of the way also benefited Thurzó’s political career. So, whether one of them or both lied to get her out of their way, they succeeded.
